Steve Thomas CBEChief Executive WLGA

The First Law of PowerPoint, if in doubt find a quote from Einstein.

How do you feel at the moment?The world is a ball of confusion

The future of local government in WalesWhere is it heading?

The future of the United KingdomWhere is it heading - Is Scotland settled?

The sleeping giant awakes English devolution

This is not so much asymmetrical devolution as “chalk and cheese” devolution.

2004 North East referendum hangover - Devolution without Regional Assemblies??

City Regions – Almost an Renaissance idea of a resurgent city-state fully empowered to run its own affairs in housing, transport, regeneration.

Devo Manc – £22 billion of public expenditure devolved to a combined authority? London, Leeds/Sheffield, Cornwall and Cambridgeshire

What does this mean for Wales? –The direction of travel in Scotland

and Wales is far more problematic in character. While both countries are on a journey to greater autonomy as nations, there is a very real danger that the opposite could be happening at the local level.

Stewardship of place

1. In-house provision of core services and public employment with a responsibility for providing

2. Maintenance of core capacity within the sector

3. Collaborative relationships

4. Local representative and participative democracy

5. Collective community outcomes

6. Joined up services meeting the needs of local communities and delivering wider strategic objectives

Strategic Commissioning

1. Expresses an explicit preference for the private & voluntary sectors as providers

2. Divestment to alternative service providers

3. Contractual relationships

4. Market democracy, individual choice and personalisation

5. Individual user outcomes

6. Fragmented services that lack

overall strategic co-ordination

What is the future operating model of Local Government?

Ensuring ----versus---- Commissioning

Are old Nick’s fantasises coming true or is there another way?

British councils should follow the practice that exists in the American Mid-West where they “met once a year to award all the council service contracts to private firms”

Almost one third of English councils are expected to outsource 40% of services by 2015 (NLGN)

£1.7 billion taken from the Welsh Government budget

The UK budget laid before Parliament on 19 March 2014 showed the Welsh Department expenditure limits as:

2013/14 £15.2bn2014/15 £15.1bn2015/16 £15.2bn

What has happened to the Welsh Government budget to deepen the cuts profile for local services?

•Welsh Government “the funding reductions experienced by local government in England signal the future financial reality for us in Wales” (23rd May 2013).

•Provisional settlement - average of 3.4% cuts. Ceredigion and Powys as low as minus 4.5% (24th June 2014), NPT with lashings of cash at -2.4% (not).

•In year cuts. Plus huge cuts to specific grants. £220 million down and counting. Nearer 4.5% cut

•REASON - the findings of the Nuffield Report and growing pressures on NHS budgets detailed in the publication “A decade of austerity? The funding pressures facing the NHS from 2010/11 to 2021/22”.

•RESULT = £425M extra to the NHS over the next 2 years. £900m coming out of local government by 2018

Rod Stewart was wrong as “The first cut is clearly not the deepest”

Requirement for local government to find £900 million in savings by 2018

• Stop maintaining roads, turn off all the street lights, cut all spending on public transport, stop all winter maintenance of roads and you would save £0.3 billion;

• Close the libraries, shut the leisure centres and theatres and stop maintaining parks and you would save a further £0.3 billion;

• Stop planning control activities, economic and community development to save another £0.1 billion; and

• Stop all home to school transport £0.1 billion.

Example – the effects of protections on Torfaen’s Budget

The third rail of a nation's politics is a metaphor for any issue so controversial that it is so “charged"; any politician who dares to broach the subject will suffer.

A recent report by Mark Jeffs of the Wales Audit Office, published for the think tank Welsh Public Services 2025 entitled, “Future Pressures on Welsh Public Services” argues that demographics and pressures are ever upward.

The report presents a best and worse case scenario based on funding forecasts. In this context what will it mean if spending on the NHS rises at the same levels that from 42% of the Welsh Government’s present revenue budget to a best case of 57% and worse case scenario of 67% in 2024-25?

Pause for a moments reflection

LGR - the salvation of local government?

Commission on Public Services Governanceand delivery – Report Published 20/01/14

Weighty Tome – 99 page executive summary 347 page main report62 full recommendations

8th July 2014 Welsh government issue the “White Paper – Reforming Local Government”

Accepts Williams recommendations for 12 authorities, but will allow variations

Sets out a timetable for reform

Two bills to produce new council in 2018 and 2020

Seeks voluntary mergers response required by 28th November

WG “Committed to facilitating these, in whatever way we can”

Financial package of support to Underpin this unclear.

LGR – The proposed “marriages made in heaven”

6 or 12 COUNCIL OPTION??

• Isle of Anglesey and Gwynedd

• Conwy and Denbighshire

• Flintshire and Wrexham

• Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire

• Neath Port Talbot and Bridgend

• Cardiff and the Vale of

Glamorgan

• Blaenau Gwent, Torfaen and

Caerphilly

• RCT and Merthyr Tydfil

• Monmouthshire and Newport

Swansea

Carmarthenshire

Powys

Its not about structures its about sustainability

?

Reorganisation as the answer? Then let’s debate the questions

CIPFA Work - What will it cost and will it save money? Up fronts costs of between £160m and £268m

In some areas mergers are clearly justified and needed. But why do we need “one size fits all”. Are the current local government boundaries right?

Why is it right for Powys to merge with the LHB but no one else?

Why base councils on health boundaries? South Wales Programme.

Consistency - Carmarthenshire stands on its own with 180,000 people yet Caerphilly with 175,000 has to merge with Torfaen and Blaenau Gwent?

WLGA discussion paper

4 Combined authorities for Wales?

• Sneaky sods in the WLGA try to create 26 councils?

•Actually its about locating functions at the right strategic level.

•Scale without foregoing local autonomy.

•Economic Development, transport, waste …………..strategic housing???

•These are the same functions that may not survive austerity.

•Strong links to the City Regions concept -Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield. Counties

•Adaptive innovation: councils creatively redefine their role and are able actively to affect their operating environment, often working in close partnership with other authorities

•Running to stand still: councils are led and managed well and can see a positive future, provided that they can keep up the current pace and that there are no major shocks

•Nostril above the waterline: councils are only able to act with a short-term view, their existence is hand to mouth and even a small external change might seriously challenge their viability

•Wither on the vine: councils have moved from action to reaction. Their finances and capacity are not sufficient to the task and they are retreating into statutory services run at the minimum levels

•Just local administration: councils have lost the capacity to deliver services, either because they have 'handed back the keys' or because responsibility for significant services has been taken from them

•Imposed disruption: councils are subject to some form of externally imposed change, such as local government reorganisation

The lexicon of the good years is dead - do more with less, continuous improvement blah blah blah

• Give bureaucratic paternalism a decent burial.

•The role of community trusts –Leisure and libraries

•The role of the third sector – social impact bonds

• The active citizen – running theatres and cinemas

• Public responsibility – paying more for valued services. It used to be called “taxation”.

• Redefining public services – focus on prevention and demand management

• BUT – what about community capacity and resourcing

Joe and Josephine Public to the Rescue?

.

What is a happening on the ground?

In Anglesey, the Seiriol Project is seeking new ways of engaging and enabling community voice. Asset mapping has taken place out across the community such as in the local shop and bowling green.

Get Monmouthshire Online brings together the county council’s community learning and library services, Communities 2.0, Monmouthshire Housing Association, MCC Housing, Melin Homes, Charter Housing and Job Centre Plus. As a result of the partnership’s work, people have learnt how to access the internet to make contact with family and friends, pay bills and shop online

Glyndyfrywdwy Enterprise Group feasibility completed in preparation for the Asset transfer of Old School from Denbighshire County Council to the local community. DVCS received funding from the Intermediate Care Fund through the County Council

In Caerphilly, work has developed with

CCBC Commissioning Manager for

Supporting People to take a fresh look at

how the smaller third sector organisations

could contribute to the delivery of priorities

in the Supporting People Programme

Cwm Taf Consultation Hub ( an ESF funded project) – an On-line engagement hub between Rhondda Cynon Taf Council, Merthyr Tydfil Council, South Wales Police, Cwm Taf Local Health Board, Voluntary Action Merthyr Tydfil and Interlink Rhondda Cynon Taf.

Cooperative councils – a new model?

There is a clear overlap between the public services ethic and cooperative values not least around open and democratic models of organisation

But the challenge is that it is not an entirely easy fit. Cooperatives are enterprises. Cooperatives can be many things, but not without a very significant stretch, can they be a local authority. - Ed Mayo

The scale of the challenge

• Let us welcome a wide ranging debate, in a small country where people should be unafraid to voice concerns and constructive criticism.

• We live in a world where single solutions are dangerous.

• What’s wrong with different solutions for different areas?

• Test the new models , but accept they will not provide all the answers

• Stop beating our chests and aspire to intelligence

• Recognise that in the current climate we “sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel”.

Conclusion

Thanks for listening

Steve Thomas CBEChief Executive WLGA

steve.thomas@wlga.gov.uk